


Flash and Substance

by Kieron_ODuibhir



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman: The Animated Series, DCU, DCU (Animated), Justice League & Justice League Unlimited (Cartoons)
Genre: Bruce Is a Good Bro, Bruce Wayne is not an idiot but that's a secret, Celebrity Media, Embarrassment, Friendship, Gen, Gender or Sex Swap, Grouchy Batman, Hiding in Plain Sight, Humor, I know you aren't supposed to laugh at your own jokes, I should really stop stealing Avengers tags for Batman, Identity Porn, Obfuscation, Paparazzi, Public Relations, Secret Identity, Spandex, Wally is not an idiot, coda finally posted wow, don't care!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-17
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-03-23 03:14:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3752353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieron_ODuibhir/pseuds/Kieron_ODuibhir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A guard approached, finally free to help with the maddened groupie, and Bruce waved him away and helped Wally up with a pull on the still-captive arm. “You are aware,” he murmured as he did so, “that you’re a woman?”</p><p>Wally blinked once, looked down, cringed at his own modest cleavage. “Wow, yeah, can’t believe I got used to this so fast. Maybe I had more important things to think about like <em>Diana’s life is in danger!</em>”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Glitter

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is kind of incompatible with one of the funniest bits of 'Starcrossed,' but we're probably somewhere in Season Two and just AU with me here. I really, really loved what they did with Flash and Batman on _Justice League_ , even if Wally filling Barry _and_ Dick's roles in the universe was kind of terrifying.

Bruce had made it to the season’s biggest charity ball only a little bit more than fashionably late, after setting up a series of computer cross-indices of the fiber evidence in an ongoing series of escalating arson cases, and leaving a set of centrifuged blood samples to run through a tricky trace element test, the second stage of which he had left in Alfred’s capable hands.

Which in turn had required him to leave the driving in those of a qualified limousine chauffeur, acquired at the eleventh hour by Alfred, who was excellent at getting around Bruce’s reasons to skip social engagements.

But because he’d been late, he’d been unable to justify ducking out early, and so had a narrower than usual escape from the company of his supposed peers. He had at least managed to pawn his date off on a young movie star who’d been stood up. She’d been a nice girl, really, without any particular socialite claws or the petty viciousness that getting too invested in the dating market seemed to instill, and it had taken a whirlwind combination of open encouragement, subliminal insult, and subtle maneuvering to get her to swap to the jilted actor, winning him the rest of the evening to himself.

This success made it easier than usual to smile his way down the red carpet in the face of camera flashes, even when he realized that a mid-sized knot of...admirers had successfully congregated among the usual society-page and tabloid reporters.

Obviously Clive Hallaway, the movie star who now had Bruce’s date, and six or seven other celebrity guests had a much greater fame than he did, since he didn’t _do_ anything to make Bruce Wayne famous except be extremely wealthy and occasionally prove himself well-intentioned, helpless, or absurdly self-indulgent, but this was Gotham, his city in several senses, which meant fans of Bruce Wayne were unusually thick on the ground, possibly on the reasoning that _he_ was _theirs_. Most of the small crowd would probably be the sort of equal-opportunity groupies he’d heard called ‘red carpet bugs,’ but that type usually took a fairly intense interest in people like him, and almost inevitably there would be one or two who were interested in proximity to him _specifically._ Which was ridiculous, but that never stopped anything from being true.

There. There was one young woman right in among the tabloid crew, along the left-hand side of the cordon, who was more or less vibrating with eagerness as she stared at him. A fact which was very _visible,_ even as he made a point to observe her without noticeably noticing, because she was wearing only blue spandex jogging shorts, battered red laceup running shoes, and a black sports bra against the mid-September chill. She seemed healthy, for the moment. He had seen some of his colleagues not much more warmly clothed, in equally or more severe weather. Though Amazons and Thanagarians appeared to be more cold-hardy than the average human.

“Uh—Mr. Wayne!” the underdressed girl exclaimed before he even got near, leaning forward with her arm stretched out in a way that drew excitement into her vicinity like a lightning rod, and caused the small crowd to boil up around her. In addition to whoever had come to see him specifically, plenty of the red-carpet hobbyists liked to get all the attention they could manage, and since he was considered a relatively easy mark, they were _all_ willing to make a stab at him.

Two of the four men working security along the red carpet cordon convened on the spot and held the crowd back by a combination of brute force and authority, a fact which the incredibly insistent girl in jogging gear seemed barely to notice.

In fact she pressed forward with total disinterest in such things as the physical existence of ropes or security personnel, as Bruce advanced toward his waiting limo, a blandly charming smile on his face, careful not to look too directly at any part of the audience lest his attention be noticed, and taken as encouragement. He did not have time for this. “Mr. Wayne?” she persisted. “I seriously need a second—if you would just…. Mr. Wayne!”

Jogging girl was egging on the others, and at this rate they were going to trail after the car as it pulled away. Which wasn’t especially a problem, in itself, but he still scowled profoundly within. Maintaining his reputation got more tiresome every year. The practical end of the Wayne Foundation was important to him, and so he _had_ to throw his own fundraisers and attend most of them, but he was getting worse and worse at pretending to enjoy himself. He wondered at what age he could justify becoming a reclusive eccentric shut-in without raising suspicion. Maybe if ‘Bruce Wayne’ could become artistically disabled. Make appearances only in a wheelchair because he’d broken his back in a polo accident. Something.

A thin arm waved almost near enough to grab his sleeve as he passed. “B! _Mister_ Bruce Wayne! Bruuuuuuce!”

He had the dreadful presentiment that jogging girl was going to turn out to be one of those who claimed to be carrying or to have borne his child. That combination of insane determination, anger, and his first name tended to indicate the type. He was always a little bit afraid it would turn out to somehow be true this time, if only by technological artifice, although the mini-scandals caused by all the pretenders were invaluable. It always saved time to have someone else foment drama for him. The image fed itself. He appreciated that kind of efficiency.

Luckily he was almost to the car, and he had employees to deal with PR.

At this point, jogging girl made a mighty lunge over the arms of security, was caught at the knees, and tumbled toward the ground headfirst. Bruce moved automatically to stabilize her; didn’t spare her as much of the fall as he could have, because that would look a little too smooth in front of cameras. But he could hardly let her bash her brains open, and the option of breaking her fall by letting her bowl him over, while providing a suitably ridiculous pratfall photo-op, would have both encouraged such lunges in the future and impeded his escape. She had excellent reflexes, and made a smooth landing with his minimal support. Unfortunately, she also latched onto his steadying arm as she landed, keeping him bent over her where she now crouched at the margin of the carpet.

Damn. Grimacing, he tried to pull away without actually _trying_ , since he _still_ didn’t want her hurt no matter how annoying she was, and that wasn’t the kind of negative PR he cultivated. He knew several tricks to force her grip open smoothly without causing more than momentary discomfort, but really didn’t care to employ them in front of cameras. As soon as security could spare someone from the effort to hold back the rest of the tide, they’d come pry her loose, but apparently he was stuck until then.

“Dammit, big B!” she hissed, jerking at his sleeve. “I do not have time for this billionaire anti-paparazzi shit right now! Diana could be dead already and you’re worried about your public!”

Bruce froze. His eyes narrowed as he actively considered the girl for the first time.

Natural red hair swinging to the clenched jawline. Green eyes. Bone structure…a comparison algorithm ran behind his eyes, and confirmed what he’d begun to suspect he heard in the voice. “Wally West?” he asked in an incredulous undertone.

Jogging girl— _the_ _Flash—_ nodded fiercely. “Jeez, I thought you were supposed to be the observant one!” Yes, he was. And he had scanned the crowd for signs of concealed weaponry, known enemies, and other possible threats. Not for women who resembled the civilian identities of his colleagues. He was a good detective, not a psychic.

A guard approached, finally free to help with the maddened groupie, and Bruce waved him away and helped Wally up with a pull on the still-captive arm. “You are aware,” he murmured as he did so, “that you’re a woman?”

Wally blinked once, looked down, cringed at his own modest cleavage. “Wow, yeah, can’t believe I got used to this so fast. Maybe I had more important things to think about like _Diana’s life is in danger!_ ” His frustrated voice crept up to almost-loud-enough-to-be-overheard, and Bruce ground his teeth.

They couldn’t continue this conversation here. It would be detrimental both to the aim of actually helping Wonder Woman, and to the purposes of the public appearance. “Meet me at my house,” Bruce directed in an undertone, firmly pulling his arm away. Wally let it go this time. “Tell the butler who you are and give him your Watchtower ID code, and he’ll show you downstairs. I’ll call you there from the car to consult.” Desperate times called for desperate measures.

Such as allowing an inadequately authenticated Flash into the Batcave by way of the mansion, and conducting vigilante business over even his very heavily secured civilian cell phone. He hoped very much he was not being played.

He turned back toward the car, not wanting to waste any longer, but Wally already had him by the arm again, frustration evidently peaking. “That’s halfway across the city and then some!” he complained. At least he kept his voice down—and yes, allowing for the physical alterations, that was the Flash’s voice.

Bruce raised his eyebrows at the fastest man alive. A benefit of talking to Flash while not wearing the cowl, at long last, was that his eyebrows were now fully visible, even if he couldn’t deploy the full potential force of his irritation in front of cameras. Wally grimaced again. “Yeah, the running…” He made rapid walking fingers through the air as though this provided extra information. “It’s not working so good. That was the point of this whammy, the girl thing was mostly just a side effect.”

Damn, then. They definitely couldn’t afford the extra time involved in Wally finding and taking a cab. Bruce bowed to the inevitable. “Fine. You’re with me. Play along.”

He smiled then, a practiced, charming expression, and slid Wally’s grip on his arm around, so that suddenly he appeared to be escorting the intrepid jogging girl, and swept a gracious hand toward the limousine. With long strides he escorted a young redheaded woman wearing a very stiff smile, and very little else, the rest of the way down the red carpet, and handed her gallantly into the back seat.

He then waved with a careful mixture of bashfulness and arrogance to his adoring public, swung himself in, and let the door be closed behind him by a valet wearing a carefully blank expression.

Immediately he turned toward Wally, sitting looking shell-shocked and tense on the leather seat. “Report,” he demanded.

Wally stared at him. “That—you just—and how— _what?!_ ”

“Urgent. Wonder Woman in danger. _Explain_.”

The Flash listened to Batman. Usually. If the context they were in meant that _Wally_ was not going to listen to _Bruce_ , he had about three seconds’ worth of patience for it. He would even leave the question of how Flash had known to find him until later—or, no, it might make a good segue to get the boy’s thoughts in order. “Superman told you who I was?”

Wally glanced uneasily toward the front of the car. “It’s completely soundproofed,” Bruce growled. When Alfred drove, that was not necessary, and the panel was generally kept open, but even if the supplemental staff for occasions like this were always people Alfred trusted, soundproofing was proving itself to be worthwhile right now. He had also switched on a pocket-sized white noise generator and jammer that would disrupt any audio bugs that might have been snuck in. He wasn’t satisfied with the security, and apparently neither was Flash, but it would have to do. “Talk.”

Flash took a breath and nodded, his narrow knee jigging nervously but not achieving the blur it usually did. Bruce made a note to find out whether the spandex shorts were Wally’s idea of appropriate feminine clothing, or part of whatever had turned him into a girl. “Yeah, Supes sent me to get you. He said he’s sorry but it was an emergency, and he figures you’ll understand?”

He glanced up through his hair to see if this was accurate, and blinked and shook his head as soon as he saw Bruce. “Man, that is so weird. I know it’s you, but every time I look at you I’m like, it’s the guy version of Paris Hilton, what? Anyway, yeah, Big Blue would’ve come himself except he’s a duck right now.”

Batman (who was fairly certain nothing he had done to maintain his frivolous cover had exposed him to anywhere near the same level of ridicule as the Hilton heiress, and hoped he was not wrong) raised his eyebrows again. “A duck.”

“Yeah, he—”

“I take it we’re facing Circe, then.”

“How do you always know things?! Yeah, that’s her. I guess she figured we weren’t any threat anymore after she magicked us, and clipped Supes’ wings so he couldn’t fly away, but I guess she figured the only thing I had going for me was speed, so she just let me run around that stupid island panicking, except I made a raft and kicked my way west. Heh, West, like my name. Sorry, sorry. Focusing. So I got here and crawled up a dock and got in kind of a fight, and this girl I met gave me some clothes she had in her bag, and I was going to head for your house but then I saw you there coming out of the party or whatever, and you know what happened then.

“Oh, and Bats?”

Bruce opted for an impassive expression. Wally eyeballed him, which was actually somewhat more effective as a woman. “We are getting the Watchtower an eight hundred number. No, we are. Because even though it’s equal parts cool and brain-scarring to know who you are now, _next_ time I’m stranded naked in Gotham with one friend turned into a bird and the other up for execution, I want to be able to go up to the nearest payphone, dial up J’onn, and call it in, so I can know people are working on the real problem, leaving me free to focus on all the public humiliation.”

The Flash, Batman observed, could still talk almost too fast to follow when he got going and sound exactly like himself, even without superspeed, as a contralto, and dressed in what were evidently somebody else’s gym clothes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been languishing in my computer for years, stymied first by lack of an ending and then by ffdotnet's peculiar lack of a Justice League Animated/DCAU category. I am now posting the first half here as a birthday present to myself. *fingers crossed*


	2. Gold

_The Flash, Batman observed, could still talk almost too fast to follow when he got going and sound exactly like himself, even without superspeed, as a contralto, and dressed in what were evidently somebody else’s gym clothes._ But more pertinently:

“You were naked?” Bruce repeated. On the Gotham docks? In this state? He’d assumed the previously mentioned gift of clothes had been merely to replace the conspicuous, ill-fitting Flash uniform. That could have gone…very badly.

Wally rolled his eyes. “Yeah, the Flash running bare, hilarious; I had to beat up some guys. So, anyway, Supes is doing what he can on his end, but he’s a lame duck, so that’s not much. The crazy witch has our Princess Di strung up in these special chains and she was talking about executing her at dawn, but she already proved earlier she likes not doing what she said she would if it’ll mess with you, so can we please bust out the bat-plane and get over there?”

Bruce nodded sharply, wishing this fête had been of the sort that he was expected to arrive to in an expensive sports car, which only needed to be entrusted to someone else for the purposes of valet parking and was returned to its owner at the end of the evening. He could have gotten them back to the manor in half the time the hired driver was doing it, without even breaking the law much. His jaw clenched.

And Wally grinned. “Ah, hey, now you look like you!”

“I can’t say the same for you,” Bruce returned drily, and the Flash folded his arms under his breasts and huffed.

Batman was not looking forward to a future of the Flash knowing his identity. Even assuming he managed to keep the secret, which he probably would, Bruce foresaw red streaks of gregarious annoyance materializing in the Cave without warning whenever Wally felt like bothering him, or happened to be on the Eastern seaboard. At least Clark limited his intrusions to actual necessity, more or less.

“Supes said you already knew who all of us were,” Wally remarked, slouching. Bruce turned his head so that he was at no risk of accidentally looking down Flash’s bra. They were rolling into the first of the northern suburbs now, having met only light traffic.

“It’s what I do,” he allowed, noncommittal.

“It’s rude, is what it is,” the enchanted young man grumbled without heat. “How’d you even figure me?”

“I knew your home city, build, height, approximate age, skin tone, and several of your interests. I had your voiceprint. Minimal research reduced the suspects to fourteen. Nine of these had jawlines that eliminated the possibility. Of the remaining five, you were the one with a pattern of sporadic absences from work. Several injury reports and other details served as confirmation.” Flash’s jaw had dropped. Bruce quirked an eyebrow. “There is a reason I go to so much effort to be considered a laughable suspect for myself.”

Wally West was almost exactly like the Flash. Not quite so loud, so brash, so prone to clowning or, oddly enough, so impatient, but just as cheerful, just as kind, just as clever, and just as likely to miss the obvious. He had the good fortune of being relatively forgettable and well out of the public eye, and was gregarious enough to have dozens of personal connections both in and out of uniform, as opposed to the slightly-compulsive overlap between Clark’s two circles of acquaintance, so he had always gotten away with it. Absent some terrible luck, he would probably go on doing so. Once he was back to himself, of course.

Enough wasted time. “Describe exactly what happened in your encounter with Circe. Did you approach her?”

Flash nodded. “Scanners picked up a new island suddenly appearing in the Atlantic about five miles off the coast, putting off an energy signature that looked like some kind of magic. It was pretty near Gotham, but you were on the emergency-only duty list for the night, so we went to check it out.”

Ascertaining the precise details of the entire event took up the rest of the drive out to Wayne Manor, and as the chauffeur came around to open the door Bruce cut off the conversation with a curt slashing gesture across his own throat, and snapped back into character just in time to disembark and then turn to hand Wally out. Flash shot him a slightly irritated look as he did so that probably meant something along the lines of ‘I can seriously still climb out of a car by myself, Bats,’ but didn’t make a scene, which was all that was necessary. Bruce carelessly thanked the driver and bid him good-night, and the man drove off to put the limo away.

He kept a hand on Flash’s shrunken shoulder as he led him across the drive and up the front steps. Super-speed might be absent, but he had learned not to underestimate the sheer unpredictability of the League’s speedster. Wally tolerated the contact, although it seemed to be a factor in his mounting tension. Just before they reached the door he stopped short and twitched the captive shoulder slightly. “Just to be clear, do you keep up this image thing in front of your staff?”

His staff? What, the Wayne Industries people? Of course he did. Then he looked at the front door, about to swing itself open at their approach, and understood. “There’s no staff. Just Alfred. And no, consider the Manor secure.”

“Okay, good….” Flash allowed himself to be chivied up the steps, and the door swung open with Alfred’s impeccable timing.

“I do hope the evening was successful, Master Bruce,” he said as he stepped back, his eyes landing on Wally with professional blandness.

“It served its purpose,” Bruce replied, giving Flash back his personal space as the door shut behind them. “Alfred, would you get the plane ready?” The butler was not much of a pilot, but he performed maintenance and pre-flight checks with the same admirable precision that he brought to all his work. Bruce himself had gear and data to amass for the upcoming assault on Circe’s island.

Since Bruce Wayne’s private jet was kept at the Gotham airfield, not at the Manor, he did not need to specify which plane, and Alfred inclined his head and then looked toward the pretty young redheaded woman Bruce had mysteriously brought home. “Is there anything I can do for our lovely young guest?” he asked. “A drink, perhaps, or a change of clothes?”

Wally waved a slightly bashful greeting. “Hi,” he said uncertainly, with a sickly grin. “I’m the Flash.”

Alfred glanced toward Bruce, who nodded a confirmation, and returned his dry attention to Wally. “Then may I say that your usual uniform does _wonders_ in concealing your figure. Might I inquire after your tailoring techniques?”

Bruce, who had known the man all his life, recognized this as teasing, with an oblique query buried within, but Wally yelped. “No, no, I’m not normally a girl! This is a spell! My costume is exactly as form-fitting as it looks.”

Alfred accepted this as though sex-change spells were a common occurrence, and quirked one eyebrow. “Ah. Does it provide exactly as little protection from injury as it appears, as well?”

“Uh…” Flash fidgeted like an amateur under a mild Alfred Look, no doubt returned to one of his numerous childhood visits to the principal’s office. (Reviewing his records, Bruce had been rather bemused by how many explosions the young West had managed to incidentally create, without even the aid of super-speed. The incident with the overloaded lithium battery was very nearly the only common occurrence between Wally West’s childhood and his own.)

“The fabric’s pretty tough,” Wally offered. “But my main defense is usually not getting hit?”

Rather than wait for Alfred’s disapproval to swing to him, Bruce said, “When you’re done with the plane, please find some light body armour that can be made to fit Wally.” They didn’t keep _that_ much women’s gear around, but Wally was currently something approaching Barbara’s size, although too tall and smaller around the chest, and without his speed, he needed what protection he could get. Bruce paused for a moment, and then generously added, “Wally, Alfred Pennyworth. Alfred, Wallace West.”

He would leave it up to them to sort out questions of first and last names. Wally was young enough Alfred might decide calling him Mister West was too formal. Leaving them to it, he strode off toward his study and the Batcave, Wally trailing after him.

Flash was enthusiastic about the concealed door behind the clock. Flash was so enthusiastic about the Batcave he seemed to briefly be completely distracted from his and Diana’s predicaments, and ran around asking questions about everything, a few of which Bruce actually answered. The only one he looked away from his perusal of Circe’s file to reply to was the one about the back door, an answer he spent stressing that if it was _completely necessary_ to enter the Batcave, not to do it through the Manor unless he could approach as a civilian. Batman did not need giant red super-speed arrows pointing toward his identity.

Bruce actually wound up being the one to find the body armour, which wasn’t the best fit, but was better than nothing, with a plain black Kevlar jumpsuit over all. “I’m going to be sweating to high heaven,” Wally complained, picking at the lower edge of the top. He looked like an emergency understudy from a spy movie. “Circe keeps that island _unseasonably_ warm, Bats.”

“Just be glad I had something without a bat on it,” Bruce advised flatly, whereupon Alfred appeared with a plate of sandwiches and two of those high-protein milkshake-egg drinks he kept insisting on serving, which were _not_ egg creams because those were a different beverage containing neither egg nor cream. At least Bruce’s wasn’t very sweet. He suspected Wally’s was half ice cream.

“Going into battle hungry is inefficient, Master Bruce,” the old man scolded. “And I know very well you never eat properly at social engagements.” Bruce rarely had much appetite, and still less when he was preparing for a time-sensitive mission like this, but he gave in quickly this time, both because it really was more efficient to just eat the damn sandwiches and because he didn’t want to undergo a full-scale Alfred scolding in front of the Flash if he could avoid it.

Flash, of course, fell on the food the instant it was made available. There was currently no need to fuel a speedster’s metabolism, but he had spent much of the night swimming five miles of ocean. Anyone would be hungry, and Wallace West was not in the habit of ignoring hunger. “This is awesome,” he said, halfway through his second sandwich, once he had slowed down enough to speak without his mouth full. (Not a consideration he normally bothered with. Alfred just had that effect.) “You just get food like this just brought to you, all the time? Can I move in?”

“No,” said Bruce instantly. He found it even harder to be short with Flash as a perky young girl than as a cheerful young man, but he was quashing that proposal _right now_.

“I suspect Master Richard’s feelings would be hurt if he came home from university to find another young gentleman had taken up residence,” said Alfred more delicately.

“Huh, who? Oh, Robin! Huh, he’s only like five years younger than me, isn’t he? We should hang out.” Flash nodded to himself and took a large swallow of milkshake.

Bruce was going to find some way to get Clark back for this. It was going to be slow and excruciating and probably involve Jimmy Olsen.

He left a message for Jason Blood about Circe’s incursion, since Blood often took it upon himself to police the magical community and Gotham was one of his home bases, and slotted his Justice League comm in to his ear. “Finish eating and let’s go,” he directed, standing. He was as ready for this encounter as he could get without a few days to prepare.

“Finally!” exclaimed Flash, leaping to his feet with a sandwich in each hand. “I’ll just take these for the road,” he added, and broke into a dash toward the Batplane. It was the first time Bruce had seen him try to run in this body, and while he seemed to have gotten a fairly good sense of its balance by this point, there was still something ungainly in the stride. And, of course, no especial speed.

Batman caught up with the runner just in time to reach the plane first, and the sputter of annoyance went ignored. After all, Wally didn’t even know how to open the cockpit.

When it opened, Batman vaulted in, Flash a beat behind, sandwich held between his teeth. “Ready?”

Wally nodded, struggling a little with the harness in Robin’s so-long empty seat. The half-eaten egg salad sandwich fell into his lap with the other two in favor of using his mouth for words. “You need the coordinates again?”

Batman didn’t dignify that with a response. He started the plane.

“Oh _yeah_ , Bats,” declared the young woman in the copilot’s seat, grinning all over her face. “You get all the cool toys.”

Still without comment, Bruce handed over two final items: a spare comm to go in Wally’s ear, and one of Dick’s old domino masks. There was tradition to consider, after all—and there was no sense risking someone recognizing the woman who’d jumped a barricade to speak to Bruce Wayne, conducting an aerial assault with Wonder Woman and Batman.

(And Superman, if they could fix the duck problem.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dick exists in the DCAU, but receives no appearance or mention in Justice League (except his initials are on a jacket in 'Epilogue') because of use-rights conflicts, so I figure he is amorphously 'around somewhere.' Animated Alfred cannot pilot. The one time we ever saw him do so, he panicked the entire time, landed by a miracle, staggered out, fell on his face, and declared, "I claim this land...for Spain!" (It's tied with Harvey Dent passing out at the table and almost drowning in chocolate mousse before Bruce realized something was wrong for 'best animated collapse' in my book.)
> 
> Also, between the haircut and the black catsuit, I think I accidentally made the Flash cosplay Black Widow.
> 
> Who'd like to see a coda to this, btw?


	3. Stardom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, the nice commenters got me over my crisis of confidence, here is the silly thing. ^^; Animated!Wally is such a total goofy cinnamon roll. (Media genres depicted here that I don't typically consume; apologies for any errors but I could not bring myself to do the research on this one.)

Wally West didn’t buy tabloids.

He had time in his life to do a lot of useless things, if he wanted. Time to stop off for a milkshake in the middle of his patrol, time to read stupid novels (he used to read a lot of thrillers as a kid, but these days he got enough of people being excitingly in danger in real life, so his recreational reading material had maybe gotten _really sappy_ , okay, don't tell), time to play video games with the kids in some of the group homes and visit his favorite villains in jail, time to smile at pretty girls. Time to do a lot of things, and still get to work mostly on time and protect his cities, and occasionally save the world.

He was the fastest man alive. Time was his oyster. Or some other bivalve. Something like that.

But the saying ‘time is money’ only held when you were wasting it. He didn’t have the biggest income, and he had the largest grocery budget of any single man living. Who didn’t dine exclusively on endangered species, or something. And his time wasn’t actually _infinite_. So buying tabloid magazines had never figured largely in his idea of things he might do.

 _Because_ of his crazy metabolism, though, he had to pick up groceries four times a week at four separate grocery stores, and even though he tried to time these runs _around_ the busy hours, this often meant waiting in line.

Which meant that even though he never _bought_ the gossip magazines, ever, or even opened them, he read the covers of _every single one,_ multiple times per week. Some weeks he had every trashy headline memorized by Wednesday.

(Waiting had never been his thing, okay, even back before minutes of standing still _surrounded by food that he couldn’t eat because he wasn’t allowed to pay for it yet_ had stretched like days.)

Which was how he knew that Bruce Wayne didn’t actually wind up in the tabloids all that much, really. He wasn’t like the Kardashians or Paris Hilton, in spite of what Wally’d said in the guy’s car on Thursday; he didn’t make a _career_ out of courting the camera, even if he was higher-profile than most of his fellow idle rich. He had a reputation, after all.

Wayne popped up somewhere in the magazine racks every few months, usually as one of the little secondary-interest floaters stacked up one side, rather than the main story; keeping the world updated on potential developments in his love life or what expensive thing he'd bought recently. Once every year or three he did something hilarious or scandalous enough that almost all the rags covered him, and sometimes even gave him the big photo and the splash headline. Occasionally, one of them used him for the cover even though he _hadn’t_ done anything entertaining. They were good at making stuff up.

Wally’d built up a certain amount of fondness for the man in this role, actually; the cameras had a hard time catching Wayne looking unhappy or annoyed, and he seemed like he knew how to have fun without hurting anybody. None of the pregnancy allegations had ever seemed plausible, and other than that Wayne was one of the more upbeat entities in the newsrags. He gave away money to good causes. He’d adopted this random orphan like ten years ago, when Wally was still a kid himself, and then kept him out of the spotlight. He made the occasional harmless gaffe.

One of the only times Wally remembered seeing a photo of Wayne looking convincingly serious was when a bunch of the papers (including actual _news_ papers) had done a twenty-fifth anniversary retrospective on the never-solved Wayne murders, which was, okay, _seriously_ insensitive. Those were the guy’s _parents_.

The rest of the time, the richest man alive smiled. Wally had gotten the impression of someone who understood that publicity was a game, and refused to play it seriously.

Man, had he been reading that wrong. Though not completely, he guessed.

But really, tabloid cover moments aside, he’d never thought much about Bruce Wayne before this past Thursday. He was the public face of Wayne Industries, but no one thought he had that much decision-making power; he seemed to see his company mainly as a source of capital with which to seduce supermodels and fund charities. Wally couldn’t really disapprove; those seemed like cool things to do with your life.

Then Thursday had happened. If he hadn’t had Wonder Woman to be worried about he’d probably have spent a little more time being freaked out about the loss of his manhood, but under the circumstances the loss of a) his powers and b) Superman’s powers had been much more important, and by the time he’d had the leisure to freak out, they’d already made Circe fix both of them, and he'd been too tired to get upset about anything anyway. After that, he had decided in self-defense not to think about it at all.

Except now he’d gone out for Saturday groceries, and. And it looked like. Like paparazzi had been among the many things and people he had not noticed even a little bit while he tried to make shiny billionaire Bruce Wayne pay attention to him because a blue and red duck had written in the sand that the guy was Batman. (He had been _so_ worried being turned into a duck had made Supes crazy and he was actually trying to get the attention of a random rich dude while Batman was off fighting crime.) He hadn’t noticed them...but they’d noticed him.

Front cover of the _Enquirer,_ backstop image.

Lean mostly-topless girl, B-cup, long legs, lunging over two security guys’ futile grasps. Curtain of shoulder-length red hair swinging out dramatically with momentum, face set with fanatic determination, one hand up like she intended to brake by grabbing Bruce Wayne on her way down, if he didn’t successfully backpedal in time.

Coming down headfirst and uncontrolled, other than that, which meant there was, thrusting straight up for the camera to get outlined against the background of night, a blue spandex butt that he really didn’t want to admit was cute. (He was totally aware that he had nice glutes, okay; they were the kind you _earned_ by running literally _all over the world_ , which no matter how fast you were and how much stamina you had was still a lot of work, but that was one thing and trying not to admire a rounder, cute girl-butt that he could not convince his hindbrain was in fact his own, while simultaneously aware it _was_ his own and undoubtedly being ogled by dudes in grocery lines across America, was _something else entirely_.)

That was the National Enquirer.

Half the cover on the _Post_ was another shot taken from a slightly different angle, a few seconds later, when it looked like the crazy woman had successfully seized Bruce Wayne and dragged him to ground level with her, gazing up at him with both hands locked around his arm, while he knelt on one knee, brows knitted.

Holy God.

He could _not_ run away at top speed and hide in a hole. He wasn’t in costume. Secret identity. No one knew he was the Flash. Plus: secret identity, _no one knew he was the girl._ Double-secret identity. There was nothing to be embarrassed about because, despite a passing resemblance, that picture had _nothing to do with him._

“Sir? _Sir?_ ” It was Mona the check-out lady, waving a hand between him and the demonic tabloids to get his attention.

Wally shook himself free of his daze. “Yeah. Yeah, sorry, I.” _Lie._ “That looks like my cousin. I’m… _really_ hoping it’s not.” He tried for a dazzling smile that came out kind of sickly.

Mona’s expression was more sympathetic than it was piqued by this possibility for gossip, which was nice of her, but she also looked kind of annoyed. Wally tried to take a step back, and his foot slid wildly. In the quarter-second it took him to realize it _wasn’t_ a supervillain attack and Captain Cold had _not_ chosen this moment to figure out his secret identity, he almost panicked, but then he looked down. Rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment.

“Ahaha. Sorry.” No wonder Mona was annoyed. He’d dropped his milk on top of both cartons of eggs.

Oh well. An extra twenty-four eggs wasn’t going to break the bank. He threw them away and went to get some more, apologizing again when he came back to check out and Mona was mopping up after him. He was pretty sure he got out without anybody actually hating him, which under the circumstances should be called success.

He took the eggy milk home, though. It rinsed off!

That was supposed to be the end of it, but that weekend had other plans for him.

The next afternoon, i.e. Sunday, Wally was crossing the break room at work when a familiar voice caught his ear, and he turned automatically—and found himself gazing at the television in the corner.

A week ago, the same thing might have happened, and he’d have dismissed it as one of those times when your brain misidentifies something as some other thing it knows better—he’d probably have laughed to himself about it, if he’d realized the person he’d mistaken Bruce Wayne for was _Batman._ They didn’t sound all that much alike, really, especially for being _the actual really exact same person_ , but he guessed there was only so much even Batman could do with one set of vocal cords.

Today, though, he turned and looked at the TV, and. There it was. _The picture._ The one from the National Enquirer. Butt thrust up toward heaven and billionaire fixed in her sights.

Oh, _no._ No, no, nope.

The picture onscreen cut from the terrible, horrible photo to the set of one of those weekly talk shows, the kind that were just tasteful enough to get non-trashy guests but not enough to pass for actual news outlets, he couldn't remember the name of the show right now but the host was Sandra Offanay. She'd started out on one of those reality shows, gotten popular. She was sitting in a comfy-looking chair opposite, yes, Bruce Wayne, in a pristine black suit that probably cost thousands of dollars, with the jacket worn carelessly open.

“Yes, I know, Bruce," she was saying brightly, like they were friends, "But now we've gotten to the question portion of our show, and we just _have_ to start with what I’m assured many of our viewers are wondering: just who was the mysterious redhead who accompanied you home after Thursday’s charity gala? And, if you’re willing to tell me…” Offanay leaned forward conspiratorially, a bewitching smile on her lips, “what’s her secret?”

Bruce chuckled. “I’m almost sad to spoil the mystery, Sandra. Truth is, a friend of hers was in trouble, and she thought I was the only one she could ask for help.”

“So you helped her?” Offanay prompted.

Bruce smiled bashfully. Wally's brain went _squish._ “I’ve been told I’m a soft touch. I made a few calls, found her something warmer to wear…it wasn’t anything much, really. We got it all sorted out. Well, I _say_ we…mostly I just located people who could actually help.”

“ _Something warmer_ , alright,” Wally muttered. Naked in a Gotham autumn sea, swelteringly insulated protective bodystocking on a misplaced tropical island…it had not been a good night for him and temperature.

“Aww,” Offanay cooed. “You sure there wasn’t anything…spicier? More exciting?”

“No,” said Bruce Wayne, blandly apologetic. “Nothing exciting at all.” _Olive trees on fire and some kind of sentient thing made of chains and way too many explosions for a day when you don’t have the speed to dodge shrapnel, and then there was a dinosaur and then the_ dinosaur _exploded—_ “Sorry.”

“Sure you’re not _hiding_ anything, Brucie?” she asked coyly, and he smiled at her, for all the world incapable of deceit. _Oh my **god** ,_ Wally mouthed, trying not to twitch.

“Nothing to hide, Sandra. Do tell your viewers, though, that falling on top of me isn’t actually a great way to get my attention.” Glint of perfect teeth while Wally glared at the screen. _Excuse_ him for not having had a lot of options. “I have a whole office to process requests, and it really would have been faster for Wanda to go to the police.”

“ _Wanda?_ ” Wally sputtered. Never mind the police; obvious misdirection there to put people off the superhero thing. Wanda?

Well. Look on the bright side. It could have been ‘Wendy.’

“Or even the Justice League,” Bruce added, laughing. “Did you hear they have an emergency hotline now?”

Wally’s jaw dropped. “He isn’t…”

On screen, Sandra Offanay accepted the change of subject, and the brand-new 800 number in question was displayed across the screen behind the interview, as a public service.

“That shameless…”

And then, superheroes not being the focus of the segment (hah) Offanay steered them back to Bruce, and his latest pet causes (refugee asylum seekers and a new couple of endowed scholarships, apparently) and whether, if Wanda wasn’t a romantic interest (wow no) he secretly liked anyone (Diana); a rumor that he was secretly married (to his work), what he was like in his personal time (a whole lot less _smiley,_ for one), and his hobbies, which apparently were publicly known to include polo, yacht racing (hahahaha), and skydiving.

Wally was so surprised to hear something _actually true_ at the end of that list it took him a minute to be hit with the picture of Batman perched atop a tidy polo pony, cape fluttering behind him in the breeze as he bent over to grimly swing his club at the little white ball.

He was balled up on one end of the battered break-room sofa in stitches when Emily came in to see what was keeping him. “Come _on_ , already, West, your shift started five minutes ago. You know we're always short on the weekends! I swear, for someone who gets your work finished so fast when you’re actually trying, you can be such a…” She clicked her tongue in disgust at the TV screen, where Offanay and her studio audience were giving Bruce Wayne a big hand. “Seriously, you watch this garbage?”

Wally picked himself up off the sofa. “I think I do now,” he announced. “Bruce Wayne is officially the funniest person in the entire _world_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> …this much-delayed coda was written long enough ago that when I made 'refugees' Bruce’s latest pet cause, they were not yet a major news item. I admit it makes more sense now, though it is no longer the milquetoast charity option it was intended as. XD Yacht racing is apparently an actual stupid thing that stupidly rich people actually do. I have fun with Bruce’s attempts to be a stereotype, okay?
> 
> I wanted to use Cat Grant for the vapid talk show, but she’s established as an actual-news talking head in the animated setting, so. Made-up person here to save the day!


End file.
